Although I'm not well qualified to judge every aspect of Burns' documentary,
I must say I was bitterly disappointed in this series. I had anxiously
awaited its premiere, but five nights later, seriously deflated.

The filmmaker's mission was unclear from the moment the series began. I was
never sure if the documentary was about the state or the city of New York. I
found the public works/Erie Canal stories fascinating, ashamed I'd missed the
point so completely in my U.S. History classes 30-odd years ago. And the
stories of the sickening persecution of African-Americans during the Civil
War era were all new and horrifying to me.

One of Burns' problems as a documentarian is that he takes a very long time
to build up to some climax, only to consummate the act in a few scenes,
leaving questions unanswered and the viewer perplexed. For me, this happened
in his telling of the construction of the Empire State Building and the
Chrysler Building. I had the distinct feeling that if he couldn't find more
archival film footage of these historic projects, he quickly dropped the
subject.

In fact, his choices of virtually everything I saw seemed suspiciously
self-serving. I don't know how New Yorkers view their history, but Burns'
choice of F. Scott Fitzgerald as some sort of literary spotted owl completely
confused me. There's a legion of writers better qualified to represent the
state and the city. I felt that choice was made because Fitzgerald's prose
contained a pithy thing or two the filmmaker could use to romanticize--and
perhaps mythologize--New York. I seem to recall that Burns closed the series
with a Fitzgerald passage--yes?

I'm fascinated with historic architecture, and the connection to people's
lives and fates. So the development of NYC's architecture, which seems to
have included tearing down one historic structure and erecting another in its
place, was spellbinding to me. Out here in the wild west (Seattle, to be
exact) our architecture is too young, and when someone tears a historic
building down, it's usually in favor of some monstrosity representing pop
culture or tacky industry. (And then vandals come to town and spray-paint
over the innocent marble and granite foundations of some of our best and
oldest buildings!)

But I digress. What about the arts, the publishing industry, politics in the
20th century? These essential points of history were entirely overlooked by
Burns. I was dumbstruck not to see anything on Harper's, the New Yorker, or
Atlantic, or mention of Harold Ross, E.B. White, James Thurber, the Algonquin
Round Table, Dorothy Parker, and dozens of other names that really shaped the
periodical publishing world from the turn of the century through the 1970s
(after that, it was overrun by "tabloid" journalism, courtesy of the Brits,
who elevated journalism to snake dung).

Sometimes a documentary, because of what it lacks, inadvertently illustrates
how much there is to know. From the beginning to the end of Burns'
documentary, my overarching impression was a sense of just how big the story
of New York is.

Diane De Rooy

There's your karma, ripe as peaches.
                  DESOLATION ANGELS
                  ---Jack Kerouac
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